Comment by zapw

For many students, it is not so simple to grasp the concept of an abstract vector space. They could be taking linear algebra as college freshmen, without having seen any formal algebraic structures before. Many are unfamiliar with the formal notion of a set (and certainly have not seen the actual axioms of a set before). Most linear algebra students are not actually math majors; they are typically studying engineering, computer science, or some other physical science. Examples of abstract vector spaces are most often function spaces of some form (for example, polynomials of at most a given degree). These examples are not so motivating for non-math students.

The main reason why people care about linear algebra is that it lets you solve linear systems of equations (and perform related operations, such as projections). A linear system of equations has an immediate correspondence with a matrix of coefficients, a right-hand side vector, and a solution vector. For this reason, it is very natural to first talk about matrices and vectors (they can be used to represent concretely a linear system of equations), and then introduce the concept of vector space in cases where the abstract view can be clarifying or help with understanding.

From my perspective, the "right" way to teach linear algebra depends on the mathematical maturity of the students. If they are honors math majors, they can easily handle the definition of an abstract vector space right away. If they have less mathematical maturity, the abstract viewpoint isn't helpful for them (at least not without first familiarizing themselves with the more concrete concepts). Think about it this way: we don't teach school children about natural numbers and arithmetic by first listing the Peano axioms.